DEMONSTRATION OF MERCURY CAPTURE EFFICIENCY DURING MEDICAL WASTE PROCESSING IN A PEM?

摘要

Medical waste has historically contained mercury which escaped to the environment during incineration. In 1997, EPA enacted strict regulations on mercury and other emissions which resulted in closure of about 90% of the medical waste incinerators. As an alternative to incineration, IET has developed a plasma based gasification system for medical waste processing. One of the design criteria was to eliminate or at least minimize mercury release from the system. This paper presents the results of a series of three tests on mercury emissions where the release was shown to be well below EPA regulatory criteria. Two of the three tests on the system offgas were below the EPA Method 29 detection limit.